The invention initially relates to a method for arranging pages of a print product on folded sheets, which are subsequently combined into an imposition scheme on print sheets, wherein the print sheets for producing the print product are initially imprinted with the pages and then cut into the fold sheets, thereafter the fold sheets are folded and cut and collated into the print products.
For producing a multipage print product by generally known print methods, e.g. in offset-, letterpress-, gravure-, flexo-, or digital print, several pages are printed together on a large print sheet. For example, a 16-page magazine in DIN-A4 size can be printed on a single print sheet in the standard 63×88 cm size (double-sided).
The genus “sheet” designates the flat paper ware in various embodiments in the context of the production of a print product. A “raw sheet” from the paper storage is cut to a “print sheet” size, which can be processed by the print press. The print sheet can be cut into “partial sheets” thereafter in the process. Print-or partial sheets are folded (or creased) as “fold sheets” in the folding machine, possibly collated into a “raw block”, which is eventually bound in .a collation folder or in a gluing folder at one edge and “block” cut at the other edges. Through the variations of this base principle, the known plurality of bound print products is created. For example, the block for producing a magazine can be provided with a wrapper made of a heavier paper, which is imprinted in a more complex manner. For producing a book, several raw blocks are bound at a common back by thread binding.
A fold sheet is folded by cross folding or parallel folding. In case of cross folding, each additional fold of the sheet is performed transversal to the preceding fold, in parallel folding it is performed parallel to the preceding fold. In zigzag or leporello folds, the folds are performed in parallel and in alternating direction, in a roll fold the fold lines are in parallel and the paper is wound up. A combination of cross fold and parallel fold is designated as mixed fold. When folding, the running direction of the paper, in particular the paper weight needs to be considered. A four-line fold for book binding is generally used up to 80 g, a three-line fold is used up to 150 g, a two-line fold is used up to 200 g, and a single line fold is up to a paper weight of 500 g.
This folding and/or creasing divides each sheet into fields that are organized into rows and columns. The pages of the print product have to be organized in these fields so that they appear in the print product in the desired sequence and in the correct orientation. The arrangement of the pages on the sheets required for a print product can be changed, e.g., by including special sheets in the raw block, for example cardboard sheets with postcards that can be cut out by the reader, as is well-known in the art, also sheets made of transparent paper that are used for multilayer graphics, or sheets with single, foil covered, or lacquered pages, or pages that are otherwise specially treated. The activity of arranging the pages of a print product is referred to as “imposing”, and the arrangement of the pages on print sheets is referred to as an “imposition scheme”.
Print sheets and their imposition schemes are construed by well known, highly specialized CAD (computer aided design) systems. Compared to a manual layout, such systems have a plurality of advantages. By linking dimensions, CAD systems on the one hand, offer an automatic plausibility control, on the other hand, linked dimensions, e.g. the width of a cutoff portion, the position and size of a marker, can be automatically adjusted, when a dimension changes, e.g. a page size. In particular, imposition schemes can be archived with little complexity and are thus available as a basis for subsequent similar applications.
Generally known methods for disposing pages of a print product on fold sheets revert to such an archive of possible imposition schemes. A new order to produce a print product is reduced according to the known method as far as possible to one or several known imposing schemes. The disposition of the pages of the print product on folded sheets is not separated according to the known method from the arrangement of the fold sheets on the print sheet. The known methods are the more flexible, the larger the underlying archive of the possible imposing schemes.
The invention provides a method for representing production of a print product in the context of networked graphic production. The production of the print product is represented in a dendritic structure starting from an order for producing the print product, over the print product and the product components of the print product down to pages of the print product.
Such a method is known from “the script for process oriented data exchange with management information systems under the aspect of a fully networked print shop”. This paper refers to the version 1.1, which is current at the moment of filing this application of the “European Print Management System Association” (“EUPRIMA”, www.euprima.orq), an association of leading innovative vendors of MIS. It is suggested therein according to the philosophy of the consortium “International Corporation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press, and Post press” (“CIP4-Consortium”, www.cip4.org) and the concept based thereon of the job definition format (“JDF”), to make their data structures also the basis of the layout of print sheet, and to define production processes within the data structures of the partial products of a job, in particular with reference to the print sheet associated with a job.
JDF and the “job messaging format” (“JMF”, a subgroup of JDF), are generally known data formats developed and maintained by the CIP4-Consortium. The development of JDF is based on the objective to standardize the communication between print shop, designer, advertising agency, and customer for printed matters and subcontractors of contractors in the context of a networked graphic production for all production variants and eventualities in a flexible manner without restrictions.
JDF is based on the extensible markup language (“XML”), also a generally known Meta language, which was developed by the “World Wide Web Consortium” (“W3C”, www.w3.org) for defining document types and according to the intention of the CIP4-consortium is to serve as a standard data format for describing processes and products, not only in all production areas of a networked print shop, in particular in sales, job costing, and order processing, production planning and control in the production itself, in prepress, press, print post processing, and shipping, in the cross sectional areas of materials and warehouse management, financial and payroll accounting, controlling cost accounting and quality assurance. By means of the vertical integration of data on the one hand of the production process, and on the other hand of the business sectors JDF is intended to facilitate a high transparency of all production processes, a standardized documentation of relevant target- and actual data and a seamless production control in a uniform, understandable, and continuous data structure.
In a JDF data structure used in processing a lob, each particular process for producing a print product is represented by a “node”. The nodes are linked together in a tree structure, which is intended to completely describe the print product and also the process for that product's manufacture. The process nodes are defined by their inputs and outputs. The inputs to nodes are the resources used by the node and the parameters required for their use. A resource that is output by a process node becomes an input to subsequent process nodes. In the XML-based hierarchically branching tree structure of JDF, each process node only has those resources that are described in a superimposed node. However, access to a resource that is output by a node in a parallel “branch” of the tree structure is performed by a generally accessible data structure. Thus, in these other, more generally accessible data structures, resources from two nodes are accessible by the respective two nodes.
Since the print- and fold sheets can be considered as partial structure of a print product according to the known method, they can also not be combined in another manner according to the possibilities provided in the manufacturing process. For example, parts (particular fold sheets or product components) of different jobs cannot be jointly printed on a fold sheet.
The present invention provides a more flexible way of arranging pages on fold sheets and for representing a job that supports this more flexible arrangement of pages on fold sheets.